Enclosures and the English Industrial Revolution. Enclosures Law

THE Industrial Revolution it transformed the world after its development in England, especially from the 18th century onwards. The urban and industrial expansion of capitalism, which was based on the exploitation of wage labor by owners and controllers of the means of production, profoundly changed the scenario of several countries and removed a good part of the population from the field.

In the case of England, this change began in the 16th century, when the Enclosure Laws (Enclosure Acts) were being edited by successive English monarchs, but that gained greater impetus from the mid-eighteenth century. This change consisted of an increasing privatization of land that was in common use by the peasants, through the fencing of these places carried out by powerful local landlords. The English countryside that was characterized by the openfield (the open, unfenced field) began to be explored in closed fields.

The communal lands were part of an economic tradition of community use that went back to the Middle Ages, and its privatization represented the rupture of capitalist relations with the old world feudal. Thus, the feudal lord ceased to be the holder of land ownership to become his

owner.

Peasants who used the land communally and extracted timber, game and other products were deprived of this source of resources. The inability to produce on their small plots of land forced these peasants to abandon them - being then appropriated by the large landowners - and trying to improve living conditions in the cities. Among them, highlighted Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, London and Glasgow, which had numerous factories. The peasants were, in this way, salaried workers in the cities, contributing to the working class formation in Great Britain.

The factories were unable to utilize the entire workforce that was concentrated in the cities, generating an immense mass of people who were left unemployed, the so-called industrial reserve army. For the bourgeois factory owners, excess labor was used to keep wages low. On the other hand, part of the unemployed began to beg and live off petty crimes. New laws against “vagrancy” were enacted, resulting in numerous arrests, floggings and hangings.

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But the enclosures had yet another consequence. Land became a commodity, possible to be traded through purchase and sale. In addition, the former lords became farmers, also starting to raise sheep for the production of wool. destined for textile manufactures and to produce other agricultural products for the market, such as potatoes and beets. The adoption of new planting techniques, such as crop rotation without fallow and the use of fertilizers and machinery, sought to increase soil productivity. To further increase the dimensions of their land, farmers began draining swampy soils and clearing forests, as well as fenced off communal lands. Science was used in the selection of new plant species and in the crossing of animals that would ensure better productivity. This process was known as agricultural revolution, whose productivity increase guaranteed the supply of the population that started to inhabit the cities, increasing life expectancy and demographic growth. But this did not represent the end of misery in English cities.

In this sense, it is interesting to note how the practice of land fences was in the genesis of capitalism, contributing to the constitution of the bourgeoisie and the working class, in addition to creating conditions for the development of the Industrial Revolution and the Agricultural Revolution in England. The two revolutions are inseparable from the expansion that capitalism experienced from the 18th century onwards, becoming a model for application in various parts of the world.

By Tales Pinto
Master in History

Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:

PINTO, Tales of the Saints. "Fencements and the English Industrial Revolution"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historiag/cercamentos-revolucao-industrial-inglesa.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.